


Gamer Movez

by twodimensionaltrash



Series: Manic Guy Company™©® [1]
Category: A3! (Video Game)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Awkward Conversations, F/M, Insults, Swearing, Video & Computer Games, Video Game Mechanics, Writing Exercise, complaining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:54:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23331973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twodimensionaltrash/pseuds/twodimensionaltrash
Summary: Itaru is a living stereotype of what was once referred to as a "1337 gamer." Alternatively titled: "How to write about portray a character playing video games for readers that actually play video games." Rated T for gratuitous swearing and absurd descriptions.
Relationships: Chigasaki Itaru/Tachibana Izumi
Series: Manic Guy Company™©® [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1665391
Comments: 5
Kudos: 35





	Gamer Movez

**Author's Note:**

> A one-shot that nobody asked me for, but I demanded of myself after thinking on the fact I hate how bland and "surface-level" most fanfiction that includes gaming is. It's often as inaccurate as it is disappointing.
> 
> I consider myself a wee bit of an expert on video games (though not on writing them). So I thought it'd be fun to write a cheeky piece about a character that plays games in the way I would want to _read_ about characters that play games. (Hence why Izumi is also an Epic Gamer in this.) There isn't much of a real story here, just a snippet out of a day in the life of a Totally Epic Gamer.
> 
> This was written while listening to [this playlist of A3! Certified Bangers](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2cesGgUbG0LKYLlUJVAkRn?si=_76EXNB3RjCbFYmrrVslZw) that I've been working on. Not required while reading, but enhances the experience.

Itaru’s vision is gray, save for his reflection in the rightmost monitor. The left glows in the pitch black of his room, illuminating his heated cheeks.

His fingers trace his jawline until they tangle in his hair. A low, guttural groan escapes him as he sinks his teeth into his lower lip. His eyelids flutter and breaths hitch in a failed attempt to calm himself. Then he nukes his desk. 

“Shit!”

Like a goddamn earthquake, his mouse collides with the surface like tectonic plates smash under the ocean’s floor. His shit goes flying into the void. The last man standing is a half-empty can of 3AM Energy that spills liquid crack-cocaine on his hand before he can prop it upright.

"What the fuck was that bullshit?"

Itaru yanks at his hair until he rips out his top-knot ponytail.

"I swear I'm going to throw myself off the nearest bridge with hate speech written on my body."

With a look of disgust, he chucks the rubberband at his dead character on-screen. He reaches for the headband he stole from his not-girlfriend, Izumi. It's not where it's supposed to be on his desk, indicating that it was a casualty of the natural disaster that wreaked havoc upon his belongings. Alas, he is trapped behind the Berlin Wall of greasy bangs.

“You’re not even going to revive me?”

Question marks from his teammates cover his corpse, and he responds with exclamation points on the lost objective. A war of pings breaks out, and its chiptune gunfire drowns out the knocking on his door.

“Wow, you finally learned how to respond to pings after ignoring them for half-an-hour. Gratz, dude! Super cool.”

A glance at the mini-map in the bottom right corner of the screen tells Itaru it's time to pack it up. The enemy team rotates from the map’s boss objective to mid-lane’s outer tower, and the tower goes down immediately. The encroaching minion wave grows in size with the boss’s area-of-effect aura. 

"This fucking team," he mutters. “I swear to God, I am going to seduce your mothers with the sole intention of ruining your families that dangle by the miniscule thread of your fathers’ wills to live that's fraying by the 9 to 5 a little more every day. Honestly, my will to live would be gone too if I had shit stains like you to look forward to after a long day being a productive member of society."

He drops a fat /FF in the chat. 

"Just concede. You fed them like they're the bourgeois and the rest of the city is in a fucking famine."

The surrender vote fails.

“No thanks. AFK.”

It's a shame his desperate ravings fall on deaf ears--he forgot his two-week in-game comms ban.

He fires a spit bullet into the nearby trash can before chugging the remains of his 3AM Energy fast enough to miss the acidic taste of creatine and suffering. The empty can hits the trash can with the force of a thousand stolen victories, hard enough to knock it over. His garbage pours onto the floor, like an allegory for his life or something.

This is the closest to spitting game or sick bars Itaru Chigasaki will ever come.

Pretty uncool, TBH. He's supposed to be escaping through games, not analyzing himself from an alternative perspective over literal garbage that reminds him of his hopes and dreams.

"Are you done?"

Itaru’s chair whips around. The silhouette of his definitely-not-girlfriend is propped against his door, lit up by those annoying light spots you get after staring at screens in the dark too long. He rubs his eyes and sneers in her general direction.

"Does it look like I'm done?” he asks. “Leave. You aren’t even supposed to be in here.”

“You should’ve thought about that before skipping every meal today,” Izumi says.

He spins his chair to turn his back to her.. “I’ve been busy.”

“Yes, you look so very busy,” she teases, her voice oozing sarcasm. 

“I’ve had to redo my promos three times today. I’ve won the first two games and lost the last three every time. What are the odds of me getting reverse-swept three times in a row?” He considers firing a text to Tsumugi to ask for some math that he can’t be assed to do himself right now. 

He decides against it--opening up the messenger app would pause his JRPG. He had an end-game raid on full-auto the entirety of the last match, and it somehow still hasn’t finished yet. 

Why bother inviting his guild if they aren’t going to hit the damn thing?

“The same odds of you bailing on our plans for lunch because of those promos?”

“It’s totally different. Our plans were tentative. I was committed to finishing my series today. Banri finished a series, and I seriously don’t want him catching up to me.” He complains under his breath while picking up the mess his garbage-firing made, never leaving the comfort of his chair. 

“Seems pretty trash of you to ditch without telling me first, but okay.” 

The light flickers on without warning. Itaru’s eyes burn. He squeezes his eyes shut and covers them with his hand.

“Excuse you,” he says, demanding reparations for her crimes.

She totally ignores him.

“Hey, what the hell?!” He looks over his shoulder, leaving a crack between two fingers so he can glare at Izumi. 

She shrugs him off. “Oops. My bad.”

He adjusts the shield protecting him from the oppressive fluorescent light, and narrows his view to Izumi’s upper half. She pouts like a child lusting after the oversized bear hanging above a balloon wall. Locks of hair twirl around her fingers like a cotton candy machine. Her free arm is wrapped around herself in defense. The case could be made that he should already be hugging her and apologizing profusely, because he refused to throw the purposely-dulled darts, and she was going to miss out on the grand prize because of it. 

Itaru wipes his face with the back of his hand and forces himself out of the chair. His knees pop like he’s coming out of retirement, and his spine cracks an entire octave as it straightens. 

“Shit,” he says. He shoves his hands in the pockets of his sweatpants. They almost get lost--the gray joggers are baggier than jeans in the 1990s. “Ah. Ow. Yikes. Okay. I’m sorry. I was looking forward to spending time with you. My day did not go as planned. I apologize.”

Izumi is a terrible actress even on her best day so it seems like she’s only mildly aggravated that he skipped out on their not-date. 

Except it’s like the third time this week, and she is more than mildly aggravated. To be fair, the other two times he had the legitimate excuse of being dragged into a meeting over lunch, but that doesn’t make his current behavior less bad.

“If you don’t want to hang out with me, Itaru, you can say as much,” she says. “I’m not going to be offended. I know that this isn’t a ‘thing’ thing.” She gestures between the two of them to clarify.

Her words fizzle in his stomach like antacids in pop--or in this case antacids in 3AM Energy. Too bad they taste worse.

Itaru frowns. “It’s not like that.”

“I know it’s not like that, that’s why I’m saying you can be straightforward with me.” She looks everywhere but at him, including at his landfill on the floor and the remains of everything usually on his desk. “...You should probably clean that up.”

He peeks at the ruins of his abandoned battle station. Empty cans of soda are tipped onto their sides, dripping their innards onto disheveled stacks of papers. His speakers dangle over the edge of the desk by their wiring. His waifu is on her back, giving a clear view of the bikini up her detachable sarong. Crumbs and dust coat his keyboard, and he gulps at the thought of having to clean it again so soon after the last time. The mess on the floor, made mostly of empty bottles and bags, ties his Garbage Fire aesthetic together.

Izumi must be disgusted with him, since he’s at least a little disgusted with himself. 

The urge to cringe is suppressed by Itaru’s instinct to self-deprecate. 

His living space is usually tidy as an homage to the abstract concept of adulthood. When the rest of the Company is in chaos, he’s supposed to be able to look at his own space and think on how much less-awful he is. He’s supposed to be the charming adult that convinces the younger members to clean their own damn room.

He’s too new to professional acting, he thinks--he can’t seem to stay in character when he’s alone.

“Yes,” he says, “I probably should.”


End file.
